DRYLAND: LOS ANGELES UNDERGROUND ART & WRITING

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NEW ADDRESS

WE MOVED TO DRYLANDLA.ORG AS OF SUMMER 2018

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"Botswana, Beats & Bushmen" by Luivette Resto

At the art exhibition she overhears a conversation between the curator and an ardent art buyer, a clinical psychologist

who has returned from her annual trip to Botswana where the Bushmen extract trauma from the body and spirit with dance around a fire warmer than blood.

The eavesdropper closes her eyes and her feet move up and down to an imaginary drumbeat

ball to heel heel to ball

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"Browsing History" by Matthew Travieso Williams

Click. Like a lock. A door opening. Closing. A window open. My eyes steal in. Twelve years-old, I’m not supposed to see you here. Flesh bright as interrogation bulb flash. It took me years to understand that as answerless.

Seventeen. The mechanics fit into place. Click and I watch your hundred bodies climax through the hours. Each low ecstatic growl adds to a chorus of hounds I’ve been

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"Migrants are like Hydroponic Plants" by Debarun Sarkar

I There was this blue or green eyed (certainly not black) girl I had met once. She sent a few lines from a poem titled ‘Diaspora Blues’ to describe my condition. I liked the words, but I told her, I do not have such a ‘blue’.

II Roots are a luxury. Contemplating roots is much higher a luxury. Roots exist only if they are nurtured. The time to nurture is precious.

III Maybe times are…

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"Sanitizer Sauna" by CLS Ferguson

We’ve become all too white washed, translucent washed, transparent into moral blindness So polite, so PC that we no longer call a spade a spade Spades are just large spoons that can pat dirt down

I’m pregnant pause waiting for my deus ex machina ending I keep revving up when the engine refuses to turn over I’m headed down this path least travelled while a telltale heartbeat keeps beckoning…

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"Cue Word" by Ingrid Calerdon

nostalgic notes from modern speakers hold music in our hands but it’s chaotic cause it won’t last

light the candles or the incense set the mood cause it won’t last

be gentle but fuck her like you hate her cause it won’t last

travel take pictures smile and remember how much time you spent thinking about shit that didn’t matter

you missed all the signs the Uni-Verse (one song) gave you

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"I'm crying" by Faleeha Hassan

Not because you squeezed my heart and threw it like a sponge into desert,

Yes, I’m crying but not because you did not smile at me

but your teeth look whiter than white when you saw a woman’s shadow pass you,

Yes, I’m crying but not because you are completely healed and no longer need my whisper to sleep,

Not because you dedicated all the poems you wrote to me

To another woman and she stupidly…

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"Earth Will Tell" by Mohja Kahf

The earth will tell of the dead in it If the mouths of the world are silent, the earth will tell of dead Syrians If the mouths of officials deny and the mouths of journalists twist, the earth will tell the earth will release its burdens bones skulls will spill up broken teeth broken ribs jaws charred buried If the mouths of the women are sealed and the mouths of the men are sealed the…

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"Three Meditations" by Coyote Rooves

meditation at a window

if you’ve ever been perched at a second story or higher window, looking out at a city of pedestrians headed separate ways, watch the ow long enough to notice: no one ever looks up at you.

people look in front of them or at their feet or at their friends they’re with, or at their phones intently as they communicate with the whole world.

they look at the no-mans-space:

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"I Too Read Faulkner" by Erika Ayón

To Professor D. S. R.

I went to the Hammer Museum where your office was located. I wanted to discuss the F you gave me on the only paper assignment in your class. When I got there, I took a seat and listened for an hour while you said, “I want to fail you but can’t because you have done well on the quizzes. I don’t understand how you got into this school. How do you have such good grades…

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"Listen to me" by Faleeha Hassan

Hurry up,

Go to him,

Slip your name into his artery,

Do that!

Or,

You will find yourself foolishly sitting like an old couch next to an empty chair it’s based on curtain draped over a silent window It has no connection of the life.

  Faleeha Hassanis a poet, teacher, editor, writer born in Najaf, Iraq, in 1967, who now lives in the United States. She is the rst woman who wrote…

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"Reality Engine" by Howie Good

Don’t mess with women who are into gore. They’re feeling the pain. They’re imagining the pain of the bullets hitting them. She’s got her boyfriend’s entrails in her backpack. It’s too awful here. Yesterday she was crying in the night because of this place. We studied in the daytime and listened to bombs in the night. We heard something that sounded like rocks being unloaded from a dump truck.…

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"Ella Vino Desde Oaxaca" by Daniel Morales Leon

Ella vino desde Oaxaca Un lugar bello donde quien puede escapa A los campos de Califas donde el Sol Cobija de los pobres ataca!

Mixteca que trabaja con Purepecha Y Huichol Cual sueño Americano? Aquí la vida es supuestamente mejor, Pero no Aquí Puro sufrimiento, no miento Lo siento, seguirás afuera por mas Que estés adentro.

Quien le dirá a su pobre mama; “Su hija murió en la…

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"Anagrammed Variations of the American Dream" by Yuan Changming

A ram cairned me In a crammed era [where] Cameramen raid

A dire cameraman [or] Arid cameramen

[Becoming]

A creamed airman [or] A carmine dream A minced ram ear [a] maniac rearmed

As freedom turns into a dorm fee Democracy to a car comedy, and Human rights to harming huts

    Yuan Changmingis a nine-time Pushcart and one-time Best of Net nominee. Changming published monographs on…

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"Twins" by Faleeha Hassan

The small black doll which I bought from the flea market

my children cut off her hands and threw it on the side of old bed,

you also cut my heart and threw it to obliterate

me and it so quiet

we are crying dry tears

the darkness is our mirror

we see through it our broken dreams,

the frivolous you and my kids and the remnant of our souls

I will sew her hands

And return it to the seller,

With…

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"Exile Is Never the End of the Story" by Mohja Kahf

Neither the daughter of my mother nor the mother of my daughters, I

cannot climb the small stone staircase on Mount Qasyoon in Damascus site of my mother’s first ascent to consciousness in her first youth, her first steps outside the family myth, from the house in the Immigrants’ Quarter where her great-grand-parents settled, pushed by the French from Algeria, to learn from Laila Said the…

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"State Lines" by Samuel Cole

Then he died, Azim, Fatima’s favorite co-worker and fag: sad, witty, lean, and closeted as he was. She loved him, the way he listened with open-minded ears (and eyes), the way he haphazardly stocked shelves as if sundries infuriated him, the way he swooped his wild hair to the left and wore more eyeliner than she did. A few years ago, they fancied opening a Burka shop. He could sew and she…

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